While I am currently looking at fog and clouds in New England, I hope that the sky will clear up in a week to see a marvelous site in the western sky after sunset.
But, is it the same perfect light that was westward-leading to the birthplace of Jesus?
Here are the basic points. The planets Jupiter and Saturn, the largest such bodies in the solar system, are appearing closer and closer to each other in the night sky. On December 21 of this year, they will be a mere six arcminutes apart. An arcminute is a 60th of a degree, just as a minute is a 60th of an hour. So the two planets will be about a tenth of a degree apart. With Jupiter being a particularly brilliant object, the two planets could appear almost as a single object. This close approach is the closest visible such pairing since the 13th century. They were even closer in 1623, but they would not have been visible to the naked eye.
Various media sources are running with headlines about this being the return of the Star of Bethlehem, both in secular (here, here, here) and religious (here, here) websites. Looking through social media, one can find some folks considering this as a sign of things to come, either apocalyptic of political.
So, is this really the same thing that happened at the birth of Christ, and a new age is upon us? Well, it is worth noting that the media has a history of taking any astronomy news in December as a Christmas sign. Just two years ago, a comet was called the ‘Christmas Comet”, and again five years before that another comet had the same hype. In fact, every year there are articles about what the Star of Bethlehem that led the Wise Men to baby Jesus really was.
But, there is more to the story than the planetary pairing being in December. The idea that Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction before Jesus’ birth and acted as the sign to the Magi has been considered for about two hundred years, with additional credit given to Johannes Kepler for making the connection. Indeed, he calculated that the two planets were in conjunction in 7 BCE, and he used this as a part of his argument for the true date of Jesus’ birth not long after. However, conjunctions of planets happen all the time–why these two? And were the planets so close in 7 BCE to become one star in the sky?
Let’s answer this in reverse order. The 7 BCE conjunction of the two gas giants were not all that close. Instead of the amazing 1/10 degree separation this year, the two were more than a full degree apart. In fact, closeness was never a part of why people like Kepler were interested in the conjunction. Instead, he was using an astrological theory called ‘Great Conjunctions’. Approximately every 20 years Jupiter and Saturn will have the same right ascension in the sky (this is the technical definition of ‘conjunction’), and it was noted that the next such conjunction takes place in another part of the sky that is interesting to astrologers. The planets tend to bounce around between three constellations that are of the same ‘element’. Based on ancient chemical ideas, there are four elements, and the conjunctions tend to bounce around in the constellations (or signs) of one element. However, there is a slow drift, and after centuries the planets conjoin in a new element. Eventually, they bounce all the way around and return to the fiery signs after about 900 years–which rounds to a millenium.
Now, for Kepler’s theory to work, the great conjunction had to be the greatest kind, the 1000-year kind that happens when the conjunction takes place in a sign of fire. But that actually happened in 26 BCE in Leo; the 7 BCE conjunction was in Pisces the fish–about as watery and not-fiery as it gets. So Kepler had to fudge the results and say the conjunction was close to a fiery sign.
Also, Kepler did not think the conjunction was the Star of Bethlehem. Rather, the conjunctions added astrological weight being a miraculous sign that God created to act as a supernatural aid to the Wise Men. After all, the text of the Gospel says the Star “went before” them, and hovered over “where the young child was” (Matt 2:9). Kepler read that literally and said the Star was a miraculous object that moved about in the atmosphere unlike any object in the study of astronomy.
So, what was the Star? If only there were a book on the subject…
However, there is another story to be told here. Why is the news media repeating an astrological theory from 400 years ago? This is in part because it was the major hypothesis put forward in planetarium shows starting in the early 1930s. Many holiday shows still present this or other Star of Bethlehem theories to their audiences every year, but most planetarium workers don’t actually believe them. So, why the continuing presentations? That question will need to be addressed at another time.
Fleeing Nergal, Seeking Stars 
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I think the pesher of this Star of Bethlehem sign might be Psalm 85:10 “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” When I watched this sign come together over the months it looked like they were coming together to kiss. Some say Jupiters name is tzedek / righteousness. To me I understand Psalm 85:10 is describing a star conjunction! Wow! 2020 was a very big year for celestial signs of the end-time messiah! Besides this sign of the star of bethlehem as you say, which I did not document in a video but I witnessed with my eyes … in 2020 I identified and interpreted the pesher of 3 other heavenly signs about the end-time messiah and I also documented a 4th sign about the end-time messiah that was identified by another channel but I provided the pesher/ interpretation of the sign! Wow… it was a big year!